


Such a Fooled Heart

by herculesmulligan1781



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Labyrinth Fusion, Halloween, Labyrinth References, M/M, Pynch Week, Pynch Week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7834723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herculesmulligan1781/pseuds/herculesmulligan1781
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam's home to celebrate Halloween with Opal and Ronan; Ronan has a nightmare inspired by a movie Opal's been obsessed with. Special guest appearance by Kavinsky as the Goblin King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Fooled Heart

Adam picks up the remote to turn off the movie Opal was watching when she fell asleep.

“Wait, didn’t she watch that this afternoon?” he asks Ronan, who has scooped the sleeping girl into his arms.

“Yes,” Ronan rumbles quietly. “It’s been on a fucking loop for weeks. She can’t look away. All puppets, all the time.”

Adam smirks. “C’mon. Also David Bowie. And his pants.”

“These are all the pants I need,” Ronan says, paused with Opal in front of her door. His free hand grabs Adam’s ass and one corner of his mouth slides upward suggestively. He leans in to brush a kiss before telling Adam he’ll just be a minute.

He tucks Opal into bed, then stands up to look at her in the light spilling in from the hallway. For a moment it’s hard to draw a breath through the tightness in his chest. He has managed to provide for Opal in the months that Adam has been at school; she’s not irreparably screwed up. And Adam’s finally home to do Halloween with her. With him. With them. _Fuck._

Back in their bedroom, he shucks off his clothes and settles himself under the covers. Adam moves to lay his head on Ronan’s chest and Ronan draws Adam even closer before turning out the light.

“This feels like a dream,” Adam murmurs into Ronan’s neck. He reaches over to lace his fingers in Ronan’s, and Ronan immediately brings Adam’s knuckles to his lips. “So much better than sleeping alone in my narrow bed of solitude.”

Ronan grunts. “Fucking right, bed of solitude.” His unclaimed fingers play idly along the ridge of Adam’s hip. He feels Adam smile in the dark.

“So,” Adam begins, his voice sleepy and lazy and honeyed, “if she’s gonna be Alice, are you the Mad Hatter?”

“No,” Ronan says.

“What?” Adam raises his head to face Ronan, even in the dark. “You know you hafta dress up with her...right?”

“As long as she gets to wear the fancy dress and trick or treat and gnaw a stray stick or two, she’ll be fine. She won’t care if I’m not dressed up.”

Adam lays his head back down with a “Hmm.” Ronan feels it against his chest and hears the dubious tone.

“I could dress up, too. We could be Tweedledee And Tweedledum.”

“Fuck no, Parrish,” Ronan says. After a moment he continues “Those ridiculous pants would block my view of your ass.” He slides a palm down over the ass in question.

“Surely you can do without lookin’ at my ass for one evenin’,” Adam murmurs. There’s undisguised pleasure in his voice.

“Again, no, Parrish,” Ronan says. “I’ve gone without looking at it for too damn long as it is.” He bends his head to find Adam’s warm mouth with his own.

***

He can’t see and he can’t breathe.

The light in this fucking claustrophobic tunnel of panic and horror is nonexistent or faint. He feels like there has never been a time when he has not been running; his lungs are scorched. And whatever is flowing over the tunnel floor smells like sewage. He fights back bile every time he thinks it's black and viscous. His hands skim the dank stone walls so he can keep his balance and track the twists and turns, but he’s taken a few spills into the muck. His sodden legs and feet are nearly numb.

Even so, he runs, blind and burnt up. He’ll die running, if it comes to that.

Beyond the blackness in front of him, a stronger spill of light shines into the tunnel, emanating around a bend. He has no strength left, but somehow speeds up, turns the corner, squints in the onrush of light, follows the tunnel until he’s out.

There’s too much light now for his blown-out pupils. He collapses onto the wooden floor, which is at least dry. He closes his eyes while his lungs flail.

“Well, well. So glad you made it, princess.”

No.

He squints in the direction of the voice.

The silhouette is too familiar.

He doesn’t remember standing, but suddenly he’s on his feet. His lungs aren’t strangled. He’s dry. He’s still panicked. Maybe more now. 

Kavinsky is wearing the white sunglasses. And also that fucking blue coat covered with bling, like the Goblin King from Opal’s movie. It hangs open, thrown over the white tank top. The fucking spheres are circling in his palm. And it’s just the two of them standing in the goddamned masquerade ballroom, Kavinsky on a raised dais, Ronan on the ballroom floor. He checks to make sure he’s not wearing the white ball gown.

“Fuck you. In the neck,” Ronan grinds through his teeth, “Where is he?” Acid eats his brain and he wants to puke. Muscle memory. And panic. _Jesus. Adam._

“Your trailer park slut?” Kavinsky asks. “Such a talented tongue on him. But you already know that.”

Fury whites Ronan’s vision. He’s blind when he lunges toward the dais. Kavinsky doesn’t need to evade him. Ronan plummets gracelessly, landing hard on his knees.

“Not much time left on the clock, sweetheart,” Kavinsky says in a warm breath, obscene lips brushing his ear; Ronan’s vision begins to trickle back. “Find him.”

He drops straight down, fast, through darkness that sticks to the back of his throat.

And then he’s bent over a rough wooden table in a small airless room, his left hand turning the page of a dusty tome, his right hand already scribbling hastily with a quill, the parchment in front of him nearly filled. Latin translations at breakneck speed.

Because there’s an hourglass next to a stunted candle on the table. The door won’t open, he can’t go, he won’t find Adam until the translations are done. There’s not a lot of sand left to fall, but there’s plenty of untranslated pages left in the tome.

Jesus, it’s sweltering, and his fucking traitorous hand is cramped almost to immobility, and the stubby candle starts to gutter, but there’s too much left to do, and there’s no more parchment, and was there ever a damned inkwell, and when that sand runs out Kavinsky will keep Adam from him forever, and the only thing he can hear is the escalating beat of his pulse like a biological bass line, but he’ll never make it, not if he translates the rest of his desolate life, which he might have to do anyway since the fucking door won’t open, and he can’t even stop writing to kick it down or burn it down or chew a hole in it with his teeth, but maybe this aneurysm that’s brewing in his head will finally burst and nothing will matter after that-

The top bulb of the hourglass contains black viscosity now, glopping into the bottom bulb, which is nearly full of black viscosity, which is leaking from the bottom of the hourglass across the table, but he can’t let it touch him, and he will never fucking finish, and oh God Adam, please-

He’s plunged into black.

He hits the stone landing so hard the bottoms of his feet sting inside his boots. When he stands, of course he’s in the fucking Escher room. And stepping down an inverted staircase along the opposite wall is-

“ADAM.” It’s a raw scream, his voice somehow relieved and terrified at once. He tries to orient himself, to make some fucking sense of the madness he’s standing in so he can plot a path to Adam. He’s trying to decide if any of the nearby staircases will get him close, but there’s too much information to sort and he can’t stand here any longer. He flings himself over the landing in pursuit.

Hip and shoulder meet more stone, then he scrambles to stand. Is he closer? Farther away? He tries to look in every direction at once. He’s just in time to see Adam, his back to Ronan, walk face-down through a door in the floor.

The sideways staircase he takes to reach the door in the floor tilts him sickeningly. He looks directly at the stairs to keep the riot of illogical information from his brain and moves as fast as he can without making himself puke. He barks Adam’s name as he rushes after him through the  
arched doorway.

And nearly plows right into Kavinsky. Adam stands next to him, wearing a pair of black sweatpants and nothing else, barefoot, dead-eyed. One of Kavinsky’s arms is slung around Adam’s bare shoulders. His free hand is juggling the damned spheres.

He glares at Kavinsky for a long moment, their faces inches apart, before Kavinsky takes a step back.

“Get the fuck away from him,” Ronan snarls.

Kavinsky smirks. “No need to be jealous, Lynch” he purrs. “Plenty to go around.” His arm drops down to hold Adam by the waist, his thumb stroking the bare skin there.

Ronan’s eyes narrow and his voice is grave. “I am done with you and your Goblin King bullshit and this fucking place,” he says. His gaze flicks to Adam, his expression instantly soft, and he extends his hand. “Let’s just go,” he nearly whispers.

“Now where’s the fun in that?” Kavinsky asks, his own gaze blistering.

Before Ronan can comprehend what’s happening Adam...melts into smoke. Now there’s just a single crystal sphere in Kavinsky’s hand, which is collecting and trapping the Adam-smoke.

“If you can catch him,” Kavinsky says, “you can keep him.” And he tosses the sphere behind him, over the landing.

Ronan launches himself into the air after the sphere.

He can see it, he’s close, but not close enough. He extends his hand, his arm, his spine, and brushes the smooth edge of the sphere with a fingertip. He just keeps reaching, his whole body taut to the point of snapping apart, willing himself to catch the sphere, to keep everything from shattering.

He falls through a black sky stitched with starlight.

And wakes instantly.

***

He’s frozen on his left side in their bed, in their room, the sky beginning to pink with dawn through the window. His heart stings and thrashes wildly; the sense of panic remains. The minutes tick by as he waits to regain feeling and sense. He thinks he might go mad before that happens.

The fingers of his left hand, which seems to rest above his head, are curled around something cool when he finally begins to feel them again. As feeling washes through his limbs, he reaches out with his right arm, wraps it around Adam’s chest, and crushes Adam tightly against him. Ronan feels his erratic heartbeat rebound off Adam’s back.

He can hear Adam draw in a breath before he turns over to face Ronan, easing his hold. Adam wears a loose smile, until he notices the wide-eyed look on Ronan’s face, registers his pounding heart.

Adam’s fingers brush Ronan’s temple, and he rises onto an elbow.

“Hey,” Adam says softly. “You okay?”

Ronan closes his eyes, lets out a breath, nods.

“Bad dream?” Adam asks.

Ronan opens his eyes. He wants to crawl inside the storm-sky blue eyes looking back at him. “Yeah,” he breathes.

“C’mere,” Adam says, moving to draw Ronan close again. Ronan folds both his arms against his chest as Adam gathers him in both arms, holding tight. Ronan’s panic begins to still.

After a moment, Adam touches Ronan’s hand. “What’s this?” he asks.

They draw apart enough to look at the crystal sphere Ronan holds in his hand.

“From Opal’s movie,” Adam says, taking it from Ronan.

They look at one another across the pillow.

“Can you...get that away from me? Away from us?” Ronan asks, his voice hoarse. _He’s safe. I’m safe. We’re home._

Adam leans over his side of the bed, sets the sphere on the floor, and pushes it so it rolls across the room.

He turns back to Ronan, takes him in his arms again, brushes his forehead with a kiss before they settle together in the warm bed.

“Lay here with me,” Adam murmurs, “sleep a little if you’re able. You can tell me all about it later.”

Ronan sighs against Adam’s chest, then begins to dissolve in his arms.


End file.
